Because nurses are the largest group of healthcare providers, they are in the best position to improve patient safety and quality of care. While teaching and preparing students to become nurses, nurse educators have a very important role in helping to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of upcoming nurses related to patient safety. Healthcare professionals, such as nurses, are highly skilled and well educated, but the healthcare system continues to be disrupted by quality and safety issues. Healthcare errors occur at an alarmingly high incidence and are the eighth leading cause of death (IOM, 2000; Langdrigan, Parry, Bones, Goldman, and Sharek, 2010). The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) has estimated that there are 40,000 incidents of medical errors every day. At least 1.5 million preventable medication errors occur each year in the United States. Nurses, as one of the largest groups of healthcare providers, have new roles and responsibilities to improve patient safety and quality. Nurses can attempt to do this through being educated. Safety and Quality of care are two of the most important morals in nursing and healthcare. Being well equipped in these two areas is based on the commitment to uphold ethical principles to do no harm, always safeguard the patient, and act with ethical comportment (Egan, 2013). Nurses come to work wanting to perform good work and help the patient heal as best as they can, but sometimes assortments of problems get in the way of focusing on quality care. Sometimes, nurses lack the tools to perform quality care, or they may work in systems where good work is not recognized or supported. Recent evidence shows that nurses want to work in systems that recognize good work and uphol... ... middle of paper ... ...ng, MA: Jones and Bartlett. Institute of Medicine (IOM). (2000). To err is human: Building a safer health system. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Retrieved from http://www.iom.edu/Reports/1999/To-Err-is-Human-Building-A-Safer-Health- System.aspx Landrigan, C.P., Parry, G.J., Bones, A.D., Goldman, D.A., and Sharek, P.J., (2010) Temporal trends in rates of patient harm resulting from medical care. New England Journal of Medicine. 363, 2124-2134. Sherwood, G., & Zomorodi, M. (2014). A New Mindset for Quality and Safety: The QSEN Competencies Redefine Nurses’ Roles in Practice. Nephrology Nursing Journal, 41, 15-22, 72. Wong, C., and Cummings, G. (2007). The relationship between nursing leadership and patient outcomes: a systematic review. Journal of Nursing Management, 10(2), 285- 305.
Healthcare organizations are committed to providing clients with quality service and experience while promoting safety, health, and healing. Nurses have the biggest impact in providing safe client care and are known for their commitment in improving or increasing client health. However, this ethical commitment may not always be met due to breakdowns in healthcare delivery. Deviations such as adoption of unsafe practices or behaviors can lead to sentinel events. Any disconnects or disruptions can be a detriment to client care. This paper will present recent cases of witnessed breakdowns of facility protocols and adoptions of unsafe nursing practices, discuss its relevance to education, and how it has affected my personal perspective on the
Integrating safety into nursing practice, education and research has a lot of significant implications for the instructor, practitioner, patient and the facility’s management. These are discussed below in detail.
Nurses are key components in health care. Their role in today’s healthcare system goes beyond bedside care, making them the last line of defense to prevent negative patient outcomes (Sherwood & Zomorodi, 2014). As part of the interdisciplinary team, nurses have the responsibility to provide the safest care while maintaining quality. In order to meet this two healthcare system demands, the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) project defined six competencies to be used as a framework for future and current nurses (Sherwood & Zomorodi, 2014). These competencies cover all areas of nursing practice: patient-centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence-based practice, quality
Baccalaureate nurses are responsible for providing and ensure our patients safety. The knowledge from others mistakes can help informs nurses of extra precautions that we can take to ensure our patient’s safety. Risk Analysis and Implication for practice course helped me understand the steps I as a nurse can take as well as the facilities I work for to help reduce the number of medication errors that occur. Interviewing the pharmacist help me get a better insight to what facilities already have in place to help prevent medication errors. However like most things you have to have educated and compassionate caring staff to enforce and follow the guidelines set in place.
Some method such as audits, chart reviews, computer monitoring, incident report, bar codes and direct patient observation can improve and decrease medication errors. Regular audits can help patient’s care and reeducate nurses in the work field to new practices. Also reporting of medication errors can help with data comparison and is a learning experience for everyone. Other avenues that has been implemented are computerized physician order entry systems or electronic prescribing (a process of electronic entry of a doctor’s instructions for the treatment of patients under his/her care which communicates these orders over a computer network to other staff or departments) responsible for fulfilling the order, and ward pharmacists can be more diligence on the prescription stage of the medication pathway. A random survey was done in hospital pharmacies on medication error documentation and actions taken against pharmacists involved. A total of 500 hospital were selected in the United States. Data collected on the number of medication error reported, what types of errors were documented and the hospital demographics. The response rate was a total of 28%. Practically, all of the hospitals had policies and procedures in place for reporting medication errors.
Patient safety is a top priority for every healthcare organization, but knowing where to direct patient safety can be a difficult task. To help guide organization in deciding where to focus their patient safety efforts, risk managers are hired by healthcare facilities to monitor and manage risk and liabilities. Nurses working in healthcare facilities keep their patients safe by risk management, according to studies. Interviews with RN revealed that nurses continually assess the clinical environment for possible risks of harm and use their knowledge of potential risks and knowledge of the patient to prevent harm. Successful risk management require nurses to recognize risks before they reach the patient, constantly prioritize the identified risks,
Tzeng, H., Yin, C., & Schneider, T. E. (2013). Medication Error-Related Issues In Nursing Practice. MEDSURG Nursing, 22(1), 13-50.
Safety competency is essential for high-quality care in the medical field. Nurses play an important role in setting the bar for quality healthcare services through patient safety mediation and strategies. The QSEN definition of safety is that it “minimizes risk of harm to patients and providers through both system effectiveness and individual performance.” This papers primary purpose is to review and better understand the importance of safety knowledge, skills, and attitude within nursing education, nursing practice, and nursing research. It will provide essential information that links health care quality to overall patient safety.
The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN’s) goal is to prepare future nurses with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) that are needed to continuously improve the quality and safety of the healthcare systems within which they work. QSEN focuses on six main competencies; patient-centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, safety, and informatics. As we have learned in earlier classes these competencies and their KSAs offer a base to help us and other nurses as we continue our education and become RNs. As we will learn in this class these KSAs go hand in hand with health assessment.
O’Shea, E (1999) Factors contributing to medication errors: a literature review. Journal of Clinical Nursing. 8, 5,496-503.
The overall goal for the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) plan is to meet the challenge of educating and preparing future nurses to have the knowledge, skills and attitudes that are essential to frequently progress the quality and safety of the healthcare systems in the continuous improvement of safe practice (QSEN, 2014).Safety reduces the possibility of injury to patients and nurses. It is achieved through system efficiency and individual work performance. Organizations determine which technologies have an effective protocol with efficient practices to support quality and safety care. Guidelines are followed to reduce potential risks of harm to nurses or others. Appropriate policies
Keeping patients safe is essential in today’s health care system, but patient safety events that violate that safety are increasing each year. It was only recently, that the focus on patient safety was reinforced by a report prepared by Institute of medicine (IOM) entitled ” To err is human, building a safer health system”(Wakefield & Iliffe,2002).This report found that approx-imately 44,000 to 98,000 deaths occur each year due to medical errors and that the majority was preventable. Deaths due to medical errors exceed deaths due to many other causes such as like HIV infections, breast cancer and even traffic accidents (Wakefield & Iliffe, 2002). After this IOM reports, President Clinton established quality interagency coordination task force with the help of government agencies. These government agencies are responsible for making health pol-icies regarding patient safety to which every HCO must follow (Schulman & Kim, 2000).
It is shocking to know that every year 98000 patients die from medical errors that can be prevented(Kohn, L. T., Corrigan, J. M., & Donaldson, M. S. (Eds.), 2000). Medical errors are not a new issue in our healthcare system; these have been around for a long time. Hospitals have been trying to improve quality care and patients safety by implementing different strategies to prevent and reduce medical errors for past thirty years. Medical errors are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer in America (Allen, 2013). In addition medical errors are costing our healthcare system an estimated $735 billion to $980 billion (Andel, Davidow, Hollander, & Moreno, 2012).
Ethics is defined as moral principles that govern a persons or a group’s behavior, ethical principles apply to both personal and professional relationships (Webster, 2015). The field of nursing is a profession that has been highly regarded and respected in society. Most nurses enter the profession in order to utilize their clinical skills to help others in their time of need. Those in failing health rely on nurses to care for them in their most vulnerable states, and expect a level of compassion and humanity while receiving care. Nurses have an ethical responsibility to their patients, clients, and their community. Compassion, empathy, and integrity are staple characteristics that nurses possess that allow them to successfully perform their
Improving patient safety at the bedside has become a priority concern in many healthcare delivery system today. A major component of quality in healthcare now places emphasis on reducing error at every stage of patient care. It has been estimated that 44,000 to 98,000 people die each year due to medical errors that could have been prevented. Medication errors have been recognized as a major cause of patient harm in healthcare services. Despite significant progress in health care systems, nursing errors in medication administrations have a huge responsibility for mortality and morbidity of thousands of people each year and an increase the healthcare related cost. Safe and accurate medication administration is therefore an important and potentially